Description:
This article focuses on Aboriginal language area reconstruction in north-east Victoria, particularly Mogullumbidj, one of the most problematical areas in Victoria. It shows that a careful analysis of primary sources is still capable of generating fresh insights and removing some of the confusion that surrounds language area reconstruction. The re-analysis of primary references shows that none of the earlier delineations, such as Tindale, Barwick, Clark and Wesson, has integrity. The resolution of the significance of the label 'Mogullumbidj" was found by examining the reaction of southwest Victorian aboriginal peoples to the Tasmanian Aboriginal man who accompanied Robinson on his 1841 journey through their lands. This revealed that the word was descriptive and not a linguistic lab

Description:
This paper justifies the presentation of a Ph.D. thesis about computer-assisted Ndjebbana on a digital video disc (DVD). Ndjebbana is a language spoken by 200 Kunibidji, the indigenous landowners of Maningrida on the north coast of Arnhem Land, Australia. Simple digital talking books about the community were created in Ndjebbana and then presented on touch-screen computers located in Kunibidji houses. Kunibidji social practice and discourse around the computer were recorded on digital video, and the traces of what the screen displayed were recorded on the computer and later synchronized with the video. Using DVD technology, the Ndjebbana talking books and the digital video can be integrated into a scholarly text for academics and an Ndjebbana-narrated report for the Kunibidji, which can be combined to present a thesis. From a theoretical perspective, a thesis on a DVD can be located in the center of critical literacy, a critical theory of technology, and critical research methodologies. There are also logistical, semiotic, and ideological reasons for presenting a thesis about computer-assisted Ndjebbana on DVD. Such a presentation will link the tools and data of the research with academic discourse and will also support the empowerment of the Kunibidji by making them more informed about the research process.

Description:
Writing in 2016, it's sometimes hard to believe the influence that poststructuralist and postmodernist 'theory' had on university and intellectual culture in the 1980s and 1990s. Virtually every humanities and social-science department (and even some science departments) either adopted or at the very least was forced to confront the body of work of half a dozen (mainly) French thinkers and the English-speaking colleagues who took up the implications of their work. In the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, 'theory' was deeply polarizing - either the high point of intellectual virtuosity, the voice of a new politics or a nihilistic assault on Western culture. English and Philosophy departments fractured or split entirely, newly formed cultural-studies journals enthusiastically applied theory's insights to the quotidian world, academic publication expanded massively. Outside the academy, theory was often denounced in the mainstream media as being meaningless jargon or politically dangerous, or both at the same time, while the theorists themselves retained a cult status both inside and outside the academy.

Description:
Since the early 1970s Australia has been described as a multicultural society. Australian Government policy, portfolios and promotion of cohesive and co-operative communities aim to encourage understanding of cultural backgrounds of all who comprise it. Considering the importance of language to everyday life, very tittle research has been undertaken on the role of language on the Victorian goldfields. This chapter deals with the impact of language on non-English speakers, specifically Italian speakers from the Jim Crow goldfield. It can be assumed that other non-English speakers on other goldfields throughout Victoria experienced similar difficulties to those at Jim Crow.

Description:
Since the early 1970s Australia has been described as a multicultural society. Australian Government policy, portfolios and promotion of cohesive and co-operative communities aim to encourage understanding of cultural backgrounds of all who comprise it. Considering the importance of language to everyday life, very tittle research has been undertaken on the role of language on the Victorian goldfields. This chapter deals with the impact of language on non-English speakers, specifically Italian speakers from the Jim Crow goldfield. It can be assumed that other non-English speakers on other goldfields throughout Victoria experienced similar difficulties to those at Jim Crow.

Description:
In this article I develop Heidegger’s phenomenology of poetry, showing that it may provide grounds for rejecting claims that he lapses into linguistic idealism. Proceeding via an analysis of the three concepts of language operative in the philosopher’s work, I demonstrate how poetic language challenges language’s designative and world‐disclosive functions. The experience with poetic language, which disrupts Dasein’s absorption by emerging out of equipmentality in the mode of the broken tool, brings Dasein to wonder at the world’s existence in such a way that doubt about its reality cannot enter the picture.

Description:
Abstract In this article I develop Heidegger’s phenomenology of poetry, showing that it may provide grounds for rejecting claims that he lapses into linguistic idealism. Proceeding via an analysis of the three concepts of language operative in the philosopher’s work, I demonstrate how poetic language challenges language’s designative and world‐disclosive functions. The experience with poetic language, which disrupts Dasein’s absorption by emerging out of equipmentality in the mode of the broken tool, brings Dasein to wonder at the world’s existence in such a way that doubt about its reality cannot enter the picture.

Description:
The word however is an adverb and an adverb alone. The current online Oxford (Oxford English Dictionary Online, n.d.) and Cambridge (Cambridge English Dictionary Online, n.d. a) English dictionaries both have it listed solely as an adverb for British English. At the risk of awakening yet another descriptivist versus prescriptivist war, it must however be acknowledged that however is often used as a conjunction. This can, and frequently does, lead to confusion though, as the reader has to read on before realising that in fact that however was actually being used as a conjunction (or connective' in modern grammatical parlance). However the cat walked down the street ...' surely has the reader thinking something along the lines of In whatever manner the cat walked down the street ...' But a typical case of what I shall in this article call conjunctive howeveritis would reveal a complete (well, incomplete actually) sentence along the lines of, However the cat walked down the street, even though it rarely ventured from the house.' Not only are we now left with a sentence fragment, but in such an instance the reader would have to backtrack and subsequently assume the However was in fact being used as a coordinating conjunction. To me this is inefficient and an enemy of lucid writing. The Cambridge English Dictionary raises the warning flag high with the following example (Cambridge English Dictionary Online, n.d. b): We can't use however as a conjunction instead of but to connect words and phrases:

Description:
This book sets out to give close and careful attention to the intimate and often surprising nature of children's sustainability learning in the context of their local places. The authors draw on new materialist and posthuman theory to consider the challenges posed to conventional environmental education by the advent of the new geological era of the Anthropocene and global climate change. Individual chapters explore the role of place and the material world in the development of literacy and language, the contribution of student-led design, arts-based approaches and indigenous knowledges as well as scientific pedagogies to provide unique insights into how children learn in their everyday places. The book is distinctive in its grounding in a range of empirical research studies with children and their teachers about their sustainability learning in a number of different locations in Australia. (From back cover).

Description:
In this reconsideration of the Ladjiladji language area in north-west Victoria, we contend that while Tindale's 'classical' reconstruction of this language identified a fundamental error in Smyth's earlier cartographic representation, be incorrectly 'corrected' that error. We review what is known about Ladjiladji and through a careful analysis demonstrate not only the errors ill both Smyth and Tindale but also Proffer a fundamental reconstruction grounded ill the primary sources.

Description:
This paper offers a fundamental critique and re-evaluation of the historical sources and more recent reconstructions which have been used to determine the language area of the Birrdhawal people of far eastern Victoria. In relation to Birrdhawal tribal territory, this paper addresses three critical issues: first, whether the Birrdhawal language is related to the Ganai language, is part of the Yuin language cluster or is a standalone distinct language; second, whether or not their country included any coastline or was landlocked; and, third, whether or not any of their country was subsumed into that of the Krauatungalung through land succession as argued by Wesson (1994, 2000, 2002). The paper offers a comparative and quantitative analysis of vocabulary from the study area and critiques previous research into constituent local group organisation.

Description:
Abstract: Ontologies in a web setting, particularly those used in a group context (such as a virtual community), need to be flexible and open to changes that reflect the evolution of knowledge. OWL the ontology language of the semantic web provides very little for facilitating the description of evolutionary changes in an ontology. We propose a dynamic web ontology language (dOWL), an extension to OWL, which consists of a set of elements that can be used to model these evolutionary changes in an ontology.

Description:
Abstract: Ontologies in a web setting, particularly those used in a group context (such as a virtual community), need to be flexible and open to changes that reflect the evolution of knowledge. OWL the ontology language of the semantic web provides very little for facilitating the description of evolutionary changes in an ontology. We propose a dynamic web ontology language (dOWL), an extension to OWL, which consists of a set of elements that can be used to model these evolutionary changes in an ontology.